Life is brief. Pluck the day and share it with friends

By Tony Wright

The thing is that he has taken himself across the world, and is living in the exotic city of Tangier, Morocco.

Too far, I figured. Too difficult. Haven't got the time. Or the spare cash. Dithering, it became easy to offer excuses to myself.

The old city of Tangier, in Morocco.

Photo: DANIEL RODRIGUES

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And yet.

My friend will never have another 70th birthday.

Many years ago, I inquired of my grandfather what was the most important lesson his long life had offered him.

"Never leave yourself asking 'what if'," he said.

Robin Williams, right, as the inspirational English teacher John Keating in the 1989 film Dead Poets Society.

I was young then, and didn't quite understand how profound was this wisdom.

Almost 30 years ago a film called Dead Poets Society turned one of history's great poetic precepts into a modern cliche. "Carpe diem", instructed the star of the movie, Robin Williams, playing an inspirational English teacher.

John Clarke, who died while hiking in April 2017.

Photo: Supplied

Those two Latin words, meaning "seize (or more poetically, pluck) the day", were written just over 2000 years ago by the Roman poet Horace.

It is from one of Horace's Odes, which begins (and I'll spare you the Latin, and use one of the more straightforward translations): "Ask not - we cannot know - what end the gods have set for you, for me"

Age cartoonist Ron Tandberg at his Queenscliff studio.

Photo: JOE CASTRO

And it ends: "Be wise, strain the wine; and since life is brief, prune back far-reaching hopes! Even while we speak, envious time has passed: pluck the day, putting as little trust as possible in tomorrow."

It's not far from my late grandfather's instruction to never leave yourself wondering "what if".

One of Tandberg's last cartoons about his struggle with cancer.

I have been pondering the advice a bit in recent times. It's age, of course. But it's also something much more.

In less than a year, some of the greats of my acquaintance have gone too early, leaving us to understand Horace's admonition that we cannot know what end the gods have set for any of us.

A few of us gathered one night afterwards to take wine and consider one of Clarke's favourite poems about gaining sustenance from nature. "You are neither here nor there," a verse of it says, "A hurry through which known and strange things pass." John Clarke was just 68 and the poem, by Seamus Heaney, was called Postscript, which was the miserable truth of it.

Tandberg could not eat at the end, yet in one of our final phone conversations he wanted me to describe in detail the contents of my family's Christmas feast. He was still plucking the day, even if the essence of it was beyond him. Tandberg was 73 and had given us every day a cartoon explaining the strange nature of the world.

Thousands of words have been written since about this decent, gifted and modest man. There is no need to repeat the tributes here, except to say that all of them are true. He used every day to try to make the world a better place for those he loved and served: his family, his friends, his colleagues, refugees consigned to distant islands and indigenous Australians. He surfed and swam and tended his garden, regularly doubting himself.

Friendship is a very particular thing, and I think ours was cemented a quarter-century ago when my family's golden retriever gave birth to a litter of puppies.

Knowing the pleasure Phoebe gave to our family, we gave the gentlest and prettiest of her pups to Michael and his wife Robyn and their two children, Sarah and Scottie, so they might be as blessed as us. Michael called the pup Misty, and as the years went by, his children growing with the pup, he often brought stories of the pleasure she delivered.

Misty lived for an astonishing 18 years. When she could no longer go on, Michael couldn't come to work for a couple of days and when he did, we had a long, quiet lunch.

You can tell a bit about a man by the way he cares for his dog.

He loved the beach and the surf, and we both had retreats by the coast - his to the east of Melbourne, mine to the far south-west.

We promised each other we would spend time together at both places over the summer. But life got in the way - too far, too difficult, no time - and we were still talking about it on the phone the day before Michael went in an ocean swimming race at Phillip Island last weekend and took his final breath, leaving everyone who knew him and loved him in disbelief.

"What if," we were left asking, and the poetry of Horace never rang truer: "Even while we speak, envious time has passed."

I am off to Morocco next month. There's a good mate's birthday to attend.